Abstract

Recent histories of early American rhetoric have not contextualized the rhetorics studied sufficiently, resulting particularly in an ahistorical portrait of Timothy Dwight as a “civic rhetor”. This essay situates Dwight’s rhetorical theory in the political, social, and economic environment of early America. Particularly, it argues that Dwight’s ideas about rhetoric, morality, politics, and theology were all tied together by his conception of “taste”, and in his career as a public minister, as a teacher at Yale, and as an active political figure in eighteenth-century Connecticut, Dwight pushed an ideology of taste that supported early American Federalism.

Journal
Rhetorica
Published
2001-01-01
DOI
10.1353/rht.2001.0027
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (0)

No references match articles in this index.